Wrapping Up

11 January 2023

Wrapping Up.

The UGA Bulldogs just wrapped up a perfect season Monday night with back-to-back championships! Go Dawgs!
Many of you are wrapping up your Christmas season, finally putting away the ornaments until next year.
At COS, as we eagerly follow Jesus into a new year, we pause to “wrap up” 2022 and count God’s blessings manifested through and around us. In days ahead, you’ll receive our Congregational Report for 2022 in preparation for our January 22 meeting, but let me offer a little teaser as I share my “wrap up” with you today.

Let us pray: Dear Lord, help us pause from time to time, to honorably “wrap up” special seasons or moments in our lives. Before we rush into the future, help us to reflect gratefully on the past you provided. May in our “wrapping up” we be “opened up” to a deeper awareness of how you have . . . and will . . . guide us in our lives. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Question for reflection: What’s one special way God blessed you in 2022?

SENIOR PASTOR’S REPORT for 2022

Pastor Fritz Wiese

A conversation with my Grandpa Wiese. I would love to compare notes with my Grandpa Wiese about what life was like 100 years apart. In 1922 he married my grandma, a farm girl from Frankenmuth, Michigan. He was also starting off as a Lutheran pastor right after a world-wide pandemic. 100 years later, I, his grandson, am also a Lutheran pastor with a bride (I still think of as my newlywed ) serving a Lutheran church coming out of a world-wide pandemic.

How fascinating it would be to exchange stories about our congregations, cultural trends, and family life. Since my Grandpa Wiese has enjoyed heaven since 1981, maybe that’s one of the cool conversations God grants me in the fullness of time. I hope so. So, to prepare, I thought I’d make a few notes about our 2022 year at COS. And come to think of it, these highlights might just serve as a quick, creative “Senior Pastor’s Report” as well! In a fun walk down memory lane, here’s what a staff conversation bubbled up for not the 12 Days of Christmas we just celebrated, but the 12 Months of COS Faith Life in 2022. God showed up at COS in big ways and we are grateful!

January.

We were stumbling out of 2021. Covid rates were in the dangerous red zone, requiring more demoralizing mask and distance restrictions. Both Beechers and other key musicians contracted the virus and we needed postpone/cancel the Moravian Love Feast. We also were still shocked but supportive of Melissa Jacobson’s decision leave our Youth & Family position to serve full-time kids with autism. While we celebrated UGA’s first championship in over 40 years, we dug into the new realities of post-covid church life and world-wide declines in church attendance and participation with discussions like, “Rejoicing as Remnant.” But core ministries never wavered and stalwart serving opportunities like blood drives, small groups, bread runs, Joshua’s Gift, and bible studies continued.

February.

COS demonstrates hallmark creativity in trying to connect folks with our very first “Sunday Fun Day” at Bus Barn in Fayetteville, along with our very first “Pass the Peace,” fostering deserts, meals, surprise gifts, and connections throughout the congregation in this era when many are still leery of joining large groups. Many at COS continue life-long reflection on social issues, such as “Christians Against Christian Nationalism.” We host mission groups from Wittenberg University and others.

By year’s end, Linda Volckmann and the FMT will have COS sharing our facility with community groups at unprecedented levels! Amazing! COS also celebrates at the Two Sparrows Village home ribbon-cutting dedication at Christian City. While zoning didn’t work out for us to share our Palmetto Road property with a home for young adults with autism, we’re thrilled that our engagement served as a huge stepping stone leading to the opening of this fantastic home for some of God’s super special children.

March.

Our “Drive-In Ashes” for Ash Wednesday is a huge hit and a terrific start or our Lenten Journey, “A 5 G Connected Life” in which we explore the discipleship value of Groups, Gifts, Growth, Grace, and Gathering. Our Men’s Retreat at Scott Bosecker’s barn and Palmetto Road is one of the largest ever. A huge blessing is that Shelly Jakubowski starts as Interim Director of Youth & Family and Laura Hawkins continues as Interim Communications Coordinator. Our kids rock it at DNow and continue their faith upbringing through Sunday and Wednesday sessions.

April

As always, we enjoy a profoundly meaningful Holy Week, with the “Rolling Stones” Easter sermon and worship. One neat feature in 2022 is the beautiful Pysanky eggs decorated in special support of Ukrainians enduring the Russian invasion. Thank you, new disciple, Jayce Lester! Thousands are raised for our global mission partner in (March Madness concluding in April) Hoops for Haiti.

New members are welcomed, marriages are celebrated, funerals are conducted. As always, we take time to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice, (Romans 12.15) through cards written, visits made, receptions offered, counseling administered, phone calls shared and in so many small but significant ways that rarely make the highlight reel. Also, LuAnne and I get to spend a day with Alberto and Magdala Portela, the liturgical design consultant that David Beecher helps us secure as part of the Sanctuary Renewal Project, a key time and energy commitment for 2022.

May

11 youth celebrate their confirmation and the Fellowship Hall celebration is packed. Our mothers are honored at a beautiful Palmetto Road worship service. Kids teach us about “A Sailor’s Bible” in their spring worship musical. I continue to lead monthly gatherings of area ELCA clergy as one of our synod’s deans and participate in our annual ELCA Senior Pastors of Larger Congregations Gatherings. Core worship services are augmented with special events like Senior Sunday and an enthusiastic return of Hops and Hymns Outreach at Line Creek Brewery.

June

Staff feature a creative “Homecoming Service of Return” June 5 to keep helping break the habit of disconnection so rampant because of Covid. Congregational care calls of connection continue. Our FH bustles like a beehive again each Monday morning as we prepare hundreds of lunches for under-resourced kids in the Summer Sack Lunch Program. 20 kids and 4 adults grow in faith at Lutherock, an ELCA camp in the NC mountains. Meanwhile, 5 dynamic college counselors bring camp to COS with Lutheroad, empowering the lives of 24 kids 5 counselors. Our VBS “Summer with Sun” is a beach and bible party for a very large crew. We connect with the larger church as our pastors and reps attend the Southeastern Synod Assembly. We delve into social justice issues through a special showing of the movie Emmanuel, a powerful exploration of forgiveness while remembering the shooting at this Charleston, SC congregation.

July

Proud that my daughter Morgan graduated magna cum laude from UGA, I’m also proud she continued a 9-year streak of COS young adults serving on staff at ELCA church camps, with Morgan serving her final year at Camp Luther. Closer to home we invest in future leadership by offering for the first time three youth internships, two in children’s ministry and one in worship technology. Supplementing the core commitment to worship, we also experience Jesus’ joy and life through seeing God’s creative beauty first hand in our first Yard & Garden Tour and another Sunday Fun Day.

August

Along with a sermon helping us consider the power we place in personal possessions, “Gimme My Stuff,” leaders did the great COS facility clean-up in preparation for the COS Give-Away. Youth appreciated God’s creation by tubing in Ellijay. We continued to worship the Lord creatively with our Beatles Liturgy. A Leadership Summit thanked, connected, and empowered our countless COS lay leaders who drive the engine of congregational ministry. We prayed for the ELCA’s triannual gathering and watched “The American Church is Re-Organizing” as we continued to ask how we best function in these post-pandemic days.

September

A variety of small groups dedicate service hours in the ELCA-wide, God’s Work Our Hands Sunday. Multiple meetings explore where God is calling COS in our Sanctuary Renewal Project, pushing our understanding of how we worship with baptismal font, communion table, and preaching pulpit. We rally programs and leaders to build faith in our children. We reach out to the community with ongoing initiatives like Hops and Hymns, ROMEOS, CANVAS, book clubs, cross ministry, and blood drives. Thanks to all of leaders who gather and shepherd us through this plethora of options.

October

We’re thrilled to enjoy our first post-pandemic Oktoberfest. The bands, beer, food, kids jumpables, and artisans are ready to go. Until the hurricane was projected to rip through the south on target for Atlanta. Prudently, leaders cancelled the long-awaited Oktoberfest and then cried when the hurricane never showed up. So, we can’t wait for 2023!  COS disciples participate in the Atlanta Pride Parade, embodying again our belief that Jesus’ arms are opened wide to all people. All means all. Kid and parents thrill at fun days at our 33-acre Palmettto Road property through “S’more Slides” and more. We’re graced with beautiful weather for worship there too. Several families head west to the family weekend at Lutheranch (the first ELCA camp in our synod and state, which COS helped launch). For their semi-annual camping trip, many COS families again gather at West Point Lake.

November

“Feed My Sheep” is the title of our 2022 stewardship series, as we joyfully consider how God entrusts us to accept Jesus’ challenge to Peter and us today to show him our love by supporting those around us. 10 dynamic families are welcomed into COS membership and we pause with gratitude to note that while our ethnic composition does not yet reflect our community, we are gratefully headed in the right direction. Things get hot at our first Thanksgiving Eve chili supper in 3 years. Globally, over 120 Haitians are fed for two months in our 80 for Haiti Thanksgiving drive, and locally over 30 families are provided turkey dinners. On November 13, we celebrate with incredible fanfare and meaning the 24+ years of faithful service by David Beecher, our retiring Minister of Music, about which so much more could be said (and is in later pages).

December

Once again crowds throng COS hallways for our super-creative Advent Family Night as we kick off Advent. Our children’s play, “Chimes in the Night,” touched our hearts. Holiday Hops and Hymns and staff Christmas caroling at a nursing home supplement the opportunities to sing “Glory to God in the highest” through incredible generosity via the Angel and Star Tree gift-giving program. Our Moravian Love Feast could have shined as one of our very best.

Well, what do you think my Grandpa Wiese would say to all that? How would this 2022 list compare to a description of his Lutheran church in 1922? He probably couldn’t fathom that I get to craft a “Word from Wiese” that magically appears on people’s computers or phones each Wednesday with a faith encouragement or that we enjoy two amazing campuses locally or so much more. But I bet we both would express deep gratitude for the staff and council folks, modern-day magi, with whom we’re blessed to serve. We both would speak deeply of how a ministry of Word and Sacrament, centered around the Triune God, indeed brings joy and life to our pandemic-plagued world. I bet we both could write annual reports for days and yet it would be impossible to describe all the amazing ways the Holy Spirit uses our Lutheran Christians colleagues to share Jesus.

I imagine that we would want to have folks reading such reports or hearing our conversation “THANK YOU” for their dynamic partnership and impact in this awesome faith adventure that connects us through centuries and continents as God’s people.

But I’m glad I’ve had a chance to start the conversation! Thanks be to God.

Gratefully serving with you in 2022 and beyond,

Pastor Fritz